The Second Mystery Megapack Page 9

  Freedmont, now handcuffed and Mirandized, chose that moment to stop in front of me.

  “How’d you know?”

  I swallowed the urge to take a swing at him. “The facts. At first, I thought DNA couldn’t lie, but in a way it did. You said you had leukemia. Sandra Montebella was a marrow donor. Your marrow donor. When she donated her marrow, it replaced yours, giving you her DNA signature. That’s why her DNA came up instead of yours. That’s also why only her blood was found at the scene, ’cause she was never there. You were. Skin, hair, everything else had your DNA stamp.”

  “Yeah,” Jules broke in, “when Mikey explained it to me, I checked the forensics. We had some of your skin cells mixed with the blood. We hadn’t run them since we had enough blood to make a match. Imagine the lab’s surprise when the skin’s DNA didn’t match the blood, but matched some of the hair samples found at the scene.”

  I nodded. I’d called the Leukemia Society to test my hunch. Evania had been more than willing to cooperate with the police.

  “By that time, we’d suspected Sandra Montebella had been your donor,” Jules said. “Why’d you do it, anyway?”

  Freedmont hunched over, looked Jules straight in the eye. “She was leaving me. Bitch said we’d be together until I died. Then wham! It’s over. Well, one of us died. It just wasn’t me.”

  * * * *

  Tuesday, 6:24 P.M.

  I slumped against the hood of the SUV, the sun sinking into the horizon. I’d driven it back to the office hanging my head out the window so I could see. Luckily, I didn’t get pulled over. But I needed to return the car to my uncle. I couldn’t face him. He’d never let me borrow it again.

  Slick Danny stood next to me, not saying anything.

  “You mad at me?” I asked.

  “Why’d I be mad at you, Michael?” He brushed at the shoulders of his suit jacket.

  “’Cause I went to the police without asking you first. Know you didn’t want me to…”

  He pursed his lips. “Shame what happened to your uncle’s car.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the lines in the parking lot.

  Slick Danny patted me on the back. “I’m not mad, Michael. Hell, you did the right thing. Turns out Mr. Montebella’s not so happy with us. I’ll have to return the bonus. Can you believe he didn’t really want us goin’ to the police after all? Thought he could use his wife’s arrest in the divorce settlement.” He seemed to search my face for something, but I didn’t know what.

  “In my shoes, you’d have done the same thing,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Only you’d think so, Michael.”

  Before I could respond, a silver Miata screeched into the parking lot, with a woman so beautiful it made my eyes pop. She pulled alongside, rolled down the window.

  “Get in, Honey,” she said to Slick Danny.

  Slick Danny crossed to the passenger side, mouthed “Montebella’s secretary,” and hopped into the car. He waved as they sped away.

  She was ugly? Man, he had high standards.

  I must have stood there for a while staring into space, ’cause when I looked around the lot was empty, except for a dark blue van with white-walled tires pulling in. Evania Peterson slipped out from behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “You aren’t hard to find. Well that, and your cousin called to let me know they’d arrested the real murderer. Nice girl, your cousin.” She moved to my side, leaned into my arm. “A PI, huh? Should have known.”

  I decided I kind of liked her spicy perfume. Still tickled my nose though.

  “So, handsome, how about that dinner?”

  “S-Sure.” I was in no hurry to see my uncle. “But you better drive.”

  TEN GRAINS OF SAND, by Christopher B. Booth

  Taylorville said that Lester Henry was “odd.” A small town finds it hard to understand a man who keeps much to himself and who has a hobby. His hobby was poring through massive volumes on criminology and in daily ferreting through the columns of a dozen or more newspapers that he subscribed for in search of mysteries. Taylorville regarded him with tolerant amusement until he asked us to elect him town constable; why a man with almost a section of fertile Missouri land, and half a dozen tenant cottages besides, wanted the office of town constable—it paid only three hundred dollars a year—was a puzzle.

  Even I was startled; and I flattered myself that frequent contact with the outside world has given me a breadth of vision beyond the somewhat nearsighted perspective of my hometown; also, as Lester Henry’s attorney and personal friend, I understood him rather better than most people did. I had always felt a great sympathy for him; it was seldom that he allowed me to see the bitterness which he felt as a result of his affliction—a hopeless lameness dating from childhood.

  When I returned from St. Louis on Thursday, after spending several days arguing several cases before the court of appeals, the silly thing had been done, and Lester Henry had furnished Taylorville with more amusement than it had enjoyed in years. He had been elected constable for the very good reason that no one else wanted it. I was indignant that he had made such a fool of himself and was eager to tell him so. We were both bachelors and lived at the Globe Hotel. His two rooms were directly across the hall from mine, and I strode in upon him, finding him by his reading lamp, absorbed in some expert treatise on criminology, as was his wont in the evenings.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me that I have lost my mind,” he said, evidently anticipating the storm which was about to break from my lips.

  “Well, haven’t you?” I demanded. “Of all the fool things! A constable! Great guns, man; what on earth were you thinking about?”

  “I was thinking that Taylorville ought to have a constable—and no one else seemed to want it,” he answered half apologetically; he was in the way of being a sensible, practical man, and he knew how absurd the business seemed.

  “There’s no use in letting this crime stuff get on your mind this way,” I sputtered. “It’s all right for you to go browsing through books and pawing over an armful of newspaper clippings every day, but I never dreamed you would take it so seriously.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t have taken it if any one else had wanted the job,” he laughed. “Then it will—I hardly know just why I wanted to be a constable.”

  “I’ll tell you why, Henry,” I retorted. “You’re tired of monkeying with crime in the abstract; you feel that if you hold some sort of a police office it will give your criminological studies sort of an —an excuse. It will help you fool yourself that you are not entirely wasting your time. You’ll be on the mailing list for the police ‘wanted’ circulars and all that sort of thing. Isn’t that it?”

  “Perhaps it is,” he replied vaguely. “I’m not really so sure myself. Anyhow, it’s done now. I’m really glad you were out of town, for I know you would have argued me out of it.”

  “And so I would,” I returned. “Heavens, man, if you’re determined to study crime in the concrete, why don’t you go to the city, where there is crime. You might do something with it, at that.”

  “A great thief catcher I’d make with this withered leg of mine,” he said, and the occasional note of bitterness crept into his voice. “No, that, like everything else, is barred to me. It’s—it’s the very devil, being a cripple, Carter. But I get a lot of fun out of my hobby. And, no matter what this town may think, I’ve got a perfect right to choose my own form of mental relaxation; as much right as a certain lawyer in our town has to spend his time behind the stove in Hocker’s store playing chess.”

  “I suppose, at that, your criticism is as logical as mine,” I grumbled. “Well, anyhow, when Taylorville develops a murder mystery we’ll have our own sleuth right on the ground; we won’t have to import any talent from the outside,” There was a look of almost fanatical hunger in his eyes.

  “You meant that as a joke, of course,” he said slowly, “but—well, it’s only the law of averages that every town should
develop a first-class mystery some time in its career. I am just waiting for that very thing to happen; I want to have a crack at it.”

  “And so that’s why you got yourself elected constable!” I burst out in derision. “Well, you’ll be waiting a long time, Henry; nothing ever happens in this town.”

  “One can never tell,” said Lester Henry; “we may have a murder sooner than you suspect. I wouldn’t be surprised at it.”

  And, in the light of the swiftly following events, his words seemed prophetic; indeed, they might have seemed even—suspicious.

  CHAPTER II

  Stuffing my pipe and tobacco pouch into my pocket, I was just in the act of getting out of Henry’s easy chair when the door fairly trembled with an impatient staccato of rapping.

  “Answer it, will you, Carter? You’re getting up, anyhow,” Henry requested me, and I did as he asked. As I swung back the door I saw Worth Taylor standing in the hall just outside. Even in the poor light I could see that he was under the stress of some strong excitement. This in itself was surprising, for he was about as even-keeled mentally as any one I knew.

  “They told me that I would find you here, Mr. Carter!” he cried, pushing his way into the room. “I want to talk to you—at once. Did—did you draw up my father’s will?”

  “To be sure I did, Worth,” I replied. “What’s wrong? If you want to talk business, suppose we go over to my office.”

  Evidently he was more concerned with getting an immediate answer to his questions than he was about privacy.

  “This is as good as place as any,” he replied. “All I want to know is this: Just what are my uncle’s rights over my interest in the tile works? Has my uncle a right to take it away from me?”

  “Has your uncle—what?” I asked, amazed. “Take your property away from you? What are you talking about, anyhow?”

  “Answer my question, please, I want to know,” he insisted.

  “What rubbish!” I snapped impatiently. “Your uncle isn’t going to take your property away from you and you know it”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind,” he doggedly insisted. “And I do know that he says he is. I know that the property my father left me is bound up in some sort of trust, and I want to know just what it is.”

  “Your—your uncle says that he’s going to—to take your property away from you?” I stammered. “Boy, you’re out of your mind!”

  But just the same I was more startled than I had ever been in my life, for the truth was that Thaddeus Taylor had full control of the property that was morally his nephew’s—to do with as he saw fit, with not a single legal string attached.

  “I know it sounds odd,” said Worth Taylor, flinging himself into a chair, “but that’s because you don’t understand. I’ll explain it to you, and then I want you to tell me just what sort of a fix I am in legally.”

  “Perhaps I had better step outside,” suggested Lester Henry.

  “Oh, stay where you are,” said Worth. “I happen to know that you aren’t a gossip.

  “I knew that Uncle Thad had my property in trust, but I didn’t know he could take it away from me; I never dreamed of such a thing until—until the quarrel.

  “I suppose every one in Taylorville knows about—about Uncle Thad’s romance. You know about it?”

  I nodded; he was right, for every one in Taylorville did know about it. It was the nearest approach to love melodrama that the town had ever experienced. More than twenty-five years before, Thaddeus Taylor, then a struggling young businessman, had been thrown over by the pretty Loretta Campbell, who had married Frank Marshall. Straightway Thaddeus Taylor had been transformed from a somewhat cheerful, commonplace, pleasant youth into a mirthless, cold, and hard man. I had often said that it had paralyzed his soul and petrified his heart. The passing years served to increase rather than soothe his bitterness. Now he was the most greedy, grasping, and thoroughly disliked man in Taylorville. By dint of relentless squeezing and scheming he had built up a slender competence into a fortune which was opulent even for Taylorville.

  “Well,” went on Worth, flushing a little, “perhaps you can imagine what a blow it was to Uncle Thad when he discovered that—that Ethel Marshall and I were—er—interested in each other.”

  I whistled softly in frank amazement.

  “Yes, I can imagine,” I replied dryly. “You mean that you and Ethel Marshall, the daughter of the woman who—er—jilted your uncle, are—are engaged?”

  He nodded.

  “Ethel and I,” he explained, “really never got acquainted until this summer. We were rather kept at a distance by what happened between her mother and Uncle Thad. We happened to be guests at the same place in St. Louis and were thrown together a lot. The result was that—well, it just happened. I knew a little of how Uncle Thad would feel, so we kept our friendship a secret. But he found out, somehow, and I had to admit that we loved each other.

  “I won’t repeat the things he said—you have a rather good idea, I suppose. The long and short of it was that he told me to take my choice—the girl or the tile works; said I couldn’t have both.”

  “And what did you say?” I inquired curiously.

  “I—I am afraid that I told him to go to—to the devil”

  “Of course,” and I smiled, “that’s the way with youth—what’s a hundred-thousand-dollar tile factory more or less?”

  “Then he can do it?” Worth demanded. “He can take it away from me? Please tell me just where I stand.”

  “In order to explain the status of your property,” I began, “it is necessary to tell you about your father’s motive. He died when you were only fourteen. He had worked mighty hard to lay the foundation of the business which is now this town’s largest industry. He had seen so many youngsters fritter away their inheritance that he wanted to take a precaution that it would not happen in your case.

  “He felt that he could trust your Uncle Thaddeus implicitly. It was virtually certain that his brother would never marry, and that he, in fact, loved you like his own son—oh, yes, in his way he does. The result was that your father turned his entire property over to your uncle, and it was understood that you should have it all when your uncle should decide that you were capable of managing it.

  “Now, see here, Worth, romance is one thing and common sense is another. Your uncle would not rob you of a penny. But you are not dealing with dishonesty; you are dealing with insanity. The chances are that he would do as he says—and there isn’t a legal way in the world to stop it. The property is morally yours, legally his.

  “Here’s the sensible thing to do: Placate him, seem to fall in with his demands. If Ethel Marshall is sensible, she will understand. Your Uncle Thaddeus is an old man, and you two young people will not have a great while to wait.”

  Worth leaped to his feet with an angry gesture.

  “I won’t do it!” he cried. “I can’t do it! Ethel is mine, and I’m going to have her, and——” His lips tightened grimly. “And,” he added, banging down his fist on Lester Henry’s library table, “I’m going to have my property, too. It was my father’s and it’s mine, and he shan’t take it away from me.”

  “There’s no way you can stop him,” I reminded him. “Better be sensible.”

  “I’m going to have it!” he declared again. “I’m going to have it out with him—now! He’s not going to rob me of what is mine; I’ll—I’ll kill him first!”

  His face was white with anger, his hands trembling. I sought to detain him as he started for the door.

  “I’m going to have it out with him—tonight!” he shouted.

  “Wait until tomorrow, Worth,” I pleaded. “Don’t go to him in a rage like that.” I loved the boy as I had loved his father.

  Worth jerked away from my fingers which reached for his coat sleeve and made for the door. In a moment he was gone.

  “Oh, let him go,” said Lester Henry quietly as I reached for my hat. “It’s all right.”

  “Indeed it isn’t all
right,” I retorted. “I’m going with him.”

  “Let him go,” pursued Henry. “I saw old Thaddeus Taylor get aboard the eight o’clock train for the city.”

  I sighed with relief.

  “Then it is all right,” I agreed, “He’ll be all right when he cools off a bit, but I was afraid—I was afraid that you might get your Taylorville murder, after all.”

  “Bosh!” said Lester Henry. “Worth isn’t of the type that slays—even in anger. I’ve got ’em pretty well classified, and I was studying him. If Thaddeus Taylor were found dead tonight it would be a mystery—about the prettiest mystery you ever saw, because I would be sure of one thing: That Worth didn’t do it”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” I said explosively. “Who else would kill him?”

  “Any one of half a dozen people might,” replied Lester Henry. “Old Thaddeus Taylor has built up a fine list of hatreds in this town. Why, I would be more apt to do it myself—I have good reason, you know.”

  I started, more at the seriousness of his tone than at the words themselves which, of course, might have been only idle banter. I found an almost forgotten memory tugging for recognition.

  Thirty-five years ago Thaddeus Taylor, on what was perhaps the only spree of his life, had raced his horse down a country lane; he had run down a freckled-faced farmer boy. That boy had been Lester Henry—and that was why Lester Henry was hopelessly lame!

  CHAPTER III

  The blow was swift in falling.

  My law offices are on the second floor of the Arnold Block, over Arnold’s drug store. The room which I use as my library has a bay window, and I frequently sit there, my feet propped up in the window sill, as I browse through my bulky sheepskin volumes. From this projecting enclosure I command a full view of Main Street. On Saturday afternoon I glanced up as I heard the thunder of the afternoon train pausing at the railroad station half a block away; a few minutes later I saw Thaddeus Taylor coming up the street. He was returning from his two-day trip to the city. He had been absent since the evening of my talk with Worth. I made up my mind that I must have a heart-to-heart talk with Thaddeus very soon; he generally listened a little to me. He plodded wearily along Main Street, turning off on his way to the tile works; he was getting old, was Thaddeus, in a pitiful way.